'Community' will be back … sometime in the spring, NBC promises

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NBC chief Bob Greenblatt pre-empted a few questions about the fate of “Community” with his opening remarks Friday (Jan. 6) at the TV critics’ winter press tour.

“The other point of confusion I want clear up is that ‘Community’ has not been canceled,” says Greenblatt, the chairman of NBC Entertainment. “It will definitely be back later this spring. …

“When I announced our midseason changes last fall and took ‘Community’ off the schedule, I failed to explicitly say that it will be back, and I want to dispel any notion that it’s quietly just disappearing from the schedule.”

That’s the good news. The less-good news is that the network hasn’t settled on when or where the show will return — although Greenblatt says it’s less likely to lead off an hour.

“We have a really tight schedule with comedies, and there’s not a lot of places to put comedies,” he says. “… It’s really going to be a matter of looking at what happens with the six comedies we’ve got coming for midseason to figure out where ‘Community’ makes the most sense.

Greenblatt also won’t say much at the moment about the show’s prospects to return for a fourth season.

“Those are really hard questions to answer at this point,” he says. “I think we’re just going to look at — like we will with almost every show we have — the success of what pilots yield, what the schedule needs are and make that decision closer to the upfront.”